Stupid mistakes in the darkroom

Christopher Walrath · Oct 11, 2009

gainer said:
I, of course, have never in my 70 years made a mistake, unless it is trying to say that with a straight face. The stupidest I have yet heard of was two beginning photo students sitting in the lunchroom dividing a box of 4x5 film: 1 for you, one for me, etc. Instructor happens by and says:"Now you've exposed the whole box!" to which they replied "It's OK. They haven't even been in the camera yet."

THAT IS GREAT! Do you have an eight? LMBO.

JBoontje · Oct 12, 2009

This thread is golden. It's not that I like to laugh at others' mistakes, but I learn alot by reading these mistakes.

Toffle · Oct 12, 2009

I'm brand new to LF... but apparently, not to arithmatic... checked two sets of notes, (exposure and processing) was sure I had finished my first box of 25... actually, thought I had just loaded #25 into the holder, and was silently grumbling to myself because it seemed such a waste to only load one side of a holder. I turned on the lights and there were three unused, and now unuseable sheets sitting on the table. The weird thing is that my accounting of sheets is only up to 24 now... what in the world did I do with a single sheet of film?

On the bright side, for my first attempts, I think I got some very useable negatives... I'm definitely hooked.

naugastyle · Oct 12, 2009

I'm just back in the darkroom for the first time in 10 years. Personally, I'm finding the red safety filter indispensable, despite knowing I didn't use it back in the day...maybe I'm just being extra cautious these days because I'm not used to printing anymore. So cautious in fact, I've "exposed" several test strips under it and every time needed at least a full minute of development to realize what I did wrong again. I tell myself that at least I haven't had any major screw-ups on full sheets of paper, but when you fuck up 4 test strips, well...the end result is the same.

Mike Té · Oct 16, 2009

Maybe a new one?

This just happened this morning.

I was moving a camera bag in my darkroom and inadvertently pulled a 4 lb. rock off of a shelf. The rock fell down 3 ft. into a box holding 3 Kowa Super 66 backs (which I'd recently listed for sale here). The rough/shabby back took the brunt, fortunately. The word "asunder" comes to mind, tho' this is the first time I've ever used it. I've now changed the classified to 2 backs for sale...

What am I doing with a 4 lb. rock 3 ft. up on a shelf in my darkroom? Long story, but I used to work in silver mines and this is a souvenir, about 85% pure, so it's heavy. (Yes, I got permission from the mine manager to take it home with me when I left) So, an appropriate prop in a darkroom, but I think it'll become the new doorstop now.

Anyone else ever have this happen?

David Brown · Oct 16, 2009

gainer said:
Instructor happens by and says:"Now you've exposed the whole box!" to which they replied "It's OK. They haven't even been in the camera yet."

Any of us that have been around this long enough (40+ years for me) have come across someone who took a flashlight (torch) into the darkroom so they could see what they were doing when they "had" to turn the lights out.

sperera · Nov 5, 2009

em.....shot what i thought was gonna be a good roll of T-Max with a superb model out on location and then developed the roll in fixer and fixed the film in developer.....em.....great.....

perkeleellinen · Nov 5, 2009

This was quite horrible: two nights ago I wanted to drain 100ml of RA4 developer out of my Nova slot processor and replenish with 100ml new. I turned the little tap, drained out the correct amount, shut off the tap only for the tap to drop off!

Surprising how quickly a Nova processor can drain when you don't want it to. 750ml of RA4 developer later I was mopping it off the floor and my clothes. What a stink!

hec · Nov 7, 2009

I was doing single tray processing 11x14's due to space constrictions on my previous "darkroom" (8x10 trays were not a problem) when I poured the stop bath back into the developer bottle! luckily the bottles were inside a tray so there was no overspill on the floor.
Afterwards I had 1 funnel only on the bottles. Right now I have a bigger space, not that big, but I can have 4 16x20 trays at a time.

nickandre · Nov 7, 2009

My photo teacher takes the containers of concentrate and dilutes them a gallon at a time into the same containers of concentrate which were used up and writes "Working Solution" on them so that it's easy to pour out a new tray when you need to. Obviously, one of the photo one students was not aware of this system and, upon discovering that there were no more mixed containers, simply grabbed the first container he saw--a full gallon of paper developer concentrate (10 gallons of developer,) and poured it into the tray. His pictures didn't come out and he decided to leave the problem for somebody else...without telling anyone. My photo teacher tested the developer the following day, and assuming it had simply gone bad and turned dark, poured it all down the drain. Then when she went to mix new developer, realized that the full container was gone...and there went $50.

timk · Nov 7, 2009

I've flicked my enlargers timer to "focus" instead of "print" occasionally. I've also forgotten to stop down the lens several times. Most of my stuff-ups have been with prints and I've fortunately never managed to ruin much more than a single sheet of paper.

I had an experience with a bulk loader where I managed to open the loader in light thinking that it didn't have any film in it (there was about 1/3 of a box of film still in it).

and I've mangled a roll of 35mm loading it onto the reel (Jobo reels suck, especially when they are still wet I've discovered). I managed to get it on but I had scratches along the edges of the negs.

I got frustrated loading a roll of 120 onto a patterson reel. Halfway through I decided that I didn't like the photos (I'd only taken 3 frames) I'd taken on the roll and it wasn't worth the effort so I just stopped!!!

131802 · Nov 7, 2009

I was rolling exposed film onto a reel when my cell phone rang -- and illuminated my little darkroom quite nicely.

gmolzahn · Nov 7, 2009

I was all excited to try out my new combi plan tank to develop some 4X5 sheets. Loaded it in a too-small changing bag. Everything went well until I pulled out the tank and discovered the sheets had fallen out of the holder and were lying in the changing bag. Doh!

removed-user-1 · Nov 11, 2009

My latest mistake - thinking that a 3-oz graduate was a 4-oz graduate when mixing Ilfosol 3 developer 1:9. Yes, the graduate is labeled.

KarnyDoc · Nov 22, 2009

Oops in the camera

While not a darkroom mistake per se, I'll share mine.

Twenty years ago, I took a B&W darkroom photography course in college as an elective under my business major. During that fall semester, I went on a fall foliage train excursion, having loaded B&W into my camera (B&W during a colorful season? Hey, I wanted to develop my own film.)

I took photographs from the coach windows at the various scenes during the trip, not really paying close attention to the film rewind lever.

The day of my class came, and when I got the chance, I loaded this roll into my tank, did the developer, stop and fixer in order, and after the Photo-Flo, eagerly unwound the film to see my images.

How was I rewarded? All thirty-six images were effectively located in one black rectangle at one end of the strip.

Sigh.

Dieter Zakas
Film Error, NJ

Roger Thoms · Nov 22, 2009

Well after developing several hundred sheets of 4x5 film in BTZS tube I loaded batch of six sheets in backwards. No have the emulsion against the tube walls doesn't work very well.

Roger

moouers · Nov 22, 2009

RH Designs said:
Ok, here's the scenario. A friend's darkroom (whom I won't name to save embarrassment!) some years ago. Back to Cibachrome processing after a quick tea break. Pour the developer into the Jobo drum. Process for 3mins or whatever, pour out the dev. Only no dev comes out. All three of us are convinced that we did actually pour the stuff in. So in goes the rinse water, rinse 1min. Start to pour out the water. Nothing. Much scratching of heads. Same thing happens with the bleach. Seriously puzzled, we remove the end cap from the drum and there inside is the towel we had been drying the drum off with after processing the previous print. Much falling about laughing ...

A few years late in responding, but that is seriously too funny.

clayne · Nov 22, 2009

KarnyDoc said:
How was I rewarded? All thirty-six images were effectively located in one black rectangle at one end of the strip.

You mean efficiently located.

DLawson · Nov 23, 2009

My mistake for yesterday, my first session printing since about 1998:

Set up the negative, did a test strip, picked an exposure time and started a first test print. That's when I noticed that the top corner of the paper was outside the frame. So I stopped, reframed the print, which required raising the enlarger head slightly, refocused and did the print with the original estimated print time. I was puzzled why the print was so dark, especially looking at the portion that had been in the test strip. I decided to go ahead and make a new test strip.

I turned toward the enlarger and suddenly realized that I had opened the lens all the way to focus and forgot to stop back down.

The "correct" print is still too dark, but I wasn't expecting finished prints from that run.

Thomas Bertilsson · Nov 23, 2009

My largest mistake in the darkroom lately has been - not using it!

I'm moving house and I need to get the darkroom up and running again. Pronto!

Aron · Nov 28, 2009

I apologize for this offtopic post, but I've just got to tell this little story somewhere over APUG.

*/off

I was taking a few photos in a park with an all-mechanical SLR. A young guy came to me and told me he liked my camera, despite he follows the trend (digital). We started talking about photography and I mentioned him I process my own film and stay up sometimes for a long time to do my printing. I started talking about the difference between developers, but I saw he wasn't really listening.
And at this point came the question: But why do you have to process your film, if it had already been exposed in your camera?
I tried to explain it from a few viewpoints, chemistry, plain raw reasoning. Nothing worked. The digital guy simply couldn't get why I needed to soup the film if the image's already been recorded on it.

off/*

Toffle · Nov 28, 2009

Aron said:
I apologize for this offtopic post, but I've just got to tell this little story somewhere over APUG.

*/off

I was taking a few photos in a park with an all-mechanical SLR. A young guy came to me and told me he liked my camera, despite he follows the trend (digital). We started talking about photography and I mentioned him I process my own film and stay up sometimes for a long time to do my printing. I started talking about the difference between developers, but I saw he wasn't really listening.
And at this point came the question: But why do you have to process your film, if it had already been exposed in your camera?
I tried to explain it from a few viewpoints, chemistry, plain raw reasoning. Nothing worked. The digital guy simply couldn't get why I needed to soup the film if the image's already been recorded on it.

off/*

To be kind to the poor chap, it may not specifically be a reflection of his native intelligence, but more an indicator of how far the paradigm has shifted in the last 15 years or so. Processing, to many digital users, amounts to tweaking the image they see on their preview screen. How many times has someone come to look at the back of your film camera to see what your last shot looks like? Ironically, that's what they "get" about LF... they can see the image, (upside down and backwards, but it's there...) until the subject moves or you move the camera.

Me, I blame Alvin Toffler. (totally off topic, but I love this quote of his, "One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition." )

rapiper1 · Nov 28, 2009

haha, enjoyed reading this thoroughly.

Aron: Three days ago or so, I took a picture of a friend, then proceed to briskly walk and lean over my shoulder to look at the picture I had just taken. (she had also watched me load the film into the camera, and commented on not having seen one of those cameras in "forever")

1) First sheet of matte fiber paper i did, i exposed upside down. I develop facedown and figured I must have flipped it wrong when it developed face up. Then looked closer and couldn't figure out why it didn't match the projected negative at all and why it was much lighter than it should have been.
2) I exposed one last sheet of paper, got distracted moving the other prints down, and then cleaned up. The next day I looked at my easel and saw the paper sitting there, exposed to daylight.
3) Used a new plastic reel as the other one was still wet. I forgot to take out the center piece of the canister that fits into the reels and lost about half the roll of film from light leaking in while developing it.

Having recently started...I'm sure I'll make plenty more.

gurkenprinz · Dec 20, 2010

Forgive me for resurrecting this thread, but it is in my opinion one of the best and funniest threads on APUG and I have to tell you what I did the other night:

For the postcard exchange, I wanted to batch expose and process 15 postcards. Because I have recently acquired the "skill" of split-grade printing (it is just so much easier to get contrast right, and I also had to do some dodging), I decided to expose ALL 15 cards with the grade 5 exposure first, put them in a paper safe (read: empty ilford 5x7 box) and afterwards expose the remaining 2.5 seconds of grade 0. Then I would put all finished prints in a big developer tray. Smart, huh?

So I finished the last grade 5 exposure, left the paper in the easel, switched the grade filter and exposed for 2.5 seconds. It was only after that when I realized I hadn't paid any attention which way was up on the other papers in the safe. Not so smart...

BTW, I did expose all the prints and by pure luck, only 6 of them display a an upside-down and low-contrast ghost. the others were fine.

eclarke · Dec 20, 2010

Here's one, I wear a little RH designs darkroom torch around my neck while working in the dark. Yesterday, while loading 4x5 sheets on a Jobo reel, I pressed the loader against the torch and flashed it, flared 1 sheet and fogged a second. I always make 2 sheets of the same exposure just to hedge against accidents, bad sheets, chemistry mistakes or emulsion flaws..Paid off this time as I stood in 15 degree weather with 35mph wind to make these photographs...Evan Clarke

Stupid mistakes in the darkroom

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